Edinburgh Fringe Comedy reviews: Pierre Novellie | Twonkey's Zip Wire To Zanzibar | Pedro Leandro + more

Pierre Novellie: You Sit There, I’ll Stand Here

Monkey Barrel 3 (Venue 515)

★★★★☆

It’s hard being an observational comedian when everything you observe is bad, argues Pierre Novellie. Nevertheless (a word he once used in the playground, much to the chagrin of his less linguistically dextrous cohort), when you’re as good at your job as he is you make it look like a doddle.

Having recently moved from a flat on one side of London to a suburban house on the other with his fiancée, he’s conscious of how reactionary thinking can lure men of his age. This makes a good jumping-off point for relatable, but superbly crafted, bits about society and domestic life, from the way people dress (there’s some lovely stuff about shapewear and leisure clothing) to becoming preoccupied with behaviours that have no impact on us.

This all leads to an unforgettably meaty story about the day of his house move, which is so vivid and grotesque you can almost smell it unfolding.

Novellie spoke about his autism in his 2024 hour, Must We?, and in his book, Why Can’t I Just Enjoy Things?, which is as accessible as it is forensic, and an absolute gift for anyone who cares about atypical minds. While he barely mentions autism in this new show (here it’s more a case of show, don’t tell, with references to his vast collection of military history books, for example, and acknowledgement that he doesn’t deal well with change), it’s a privilege to taste the fruits of a brain that seems to approach comedy the way an expensive barrister can toy with the law.

It’s rare for an hour to whizz by so fast, for nothing to be wasted (even the absorption of stage sweat) and for one to wish for a show to be much longer. Novellie even provides some evidence that not everything is bad after all.

Ashley Davies

Until 24 August

Twonkey's Zip Wire To Zanzibar

★★★★☆

Dragonfly (Venue 414)

There can be many reasons to love a comedy show: it is witty, full of jokes, cleverly political. But Twonkey's shows are none of these things. He is the closest we have to a comedy Salvador Dali, creating surreal worlds, and populating his with a motley collection of moth eaten puppets.

Such is the power of the Twonkeyverse to draw you in that I spend quite a lot of the show thinking, despite the devastating news of Twonkey's death in a contaminated tinned-product-related tragedy being broken to us early on, that perhaps the great man is not dead, but in the grip of a life-changing gender identity crisis. However Twonketta, his 'widow', is an unexpectable joy to spend an hour with. She handles the puppets – old favourites and exciting newcomers – with aplomb. OK maybe not a full plomb, but at least a half plomb. She is still getting used to the stilettos. With her leading the way we get dastardly deeds at the fairground, a rollercoaster catastrophe, Steve's balls and fascinating facts about the origins of Cumbernauld.

For frequent flyers in the Twonkeyverse, don't worry, she inherits the Transylvanian Finger Fantasies and the Ship's Wheel. However tonight's gathering gets a never to be forgotten moment of onstage inspiration. “This is improvised,” says Twonketta, as she removes her knickers to place on the wheel, having forgotten the prop pair.

Twonkey is dead. Long live Twonketta.

Kate Copstick

until 24 August

Pedro Leandro: Soft Animal

Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33)

★★★☆☆

What to make of Soft Animal, Pedro Leandro's knotty, soul-baring Fringe debut, a composed, existential howl of wounded ego and self-analysis of troubled sexuality? The actorly former Edinburgh University student is a man out of step, underappreciated in his own time and failing to darken the Donmar Warehouse's doorstep, defensively harking back to the golden age of Brando and Kazan. He even treats us to his Eddie Carbone, hamming his way through A View from the Bridge with excessive New Yoik histrionics. As an angsty young gay man craving artistic recognition, he's found his psychological lodestone in Alan Downs' book The Velvet Rage, which posits that queer people sense their difference from childhood, compensating for anticipated rejection by developing a near-compulsive need to achieve. Unfortunately, we can't all be Lin-Manuel Miranda.

If that sounds a lot for Leandro to unpack, it is. But he's a charming, if simmeringly agitated performer. While he's gone out of his way finding issues with his supportive if emotionally repressed family, that fits with Downs' premise, the comic having internalised an ever-so-slightly off vibe. Besides, he's not entirely paranoid. Despite Iberian parentage, he was raised in Brussels and had his doomed shot at child stardom in the Francophone world. Upfront about his problems, this is an articulate, entertaining introduction to them.

Jay Richardson

until 24 August

READ MORE: US Comedian Parker Callahan: 'Lying is an art form'

Rohan Sharma: Mad Dog

Pleasance Courtyard (Venue 33)

★★★☆☆

Psychologists could have a field day examining how Rohan Sharma's disconnect from his Indian heritage has turned him into an inveterate japester, with an avowed love of banter and desire to bond with his front rows. The likeably puckish stand-up is more into endless deflection than addressing his issues though, which serves perfectly well in the context of a debut Fringe hour. Raised privileged, with none of the immigrant struggle of his father, in boring, predominately white Beaconsfield, the market town's only claim to exotica and infamy is that Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi lived there for a while. With tongue firmly planted in cheek, Sharma feels affinity with the late “Mad Dog” due to his dearth of “brown” role models growing up.

With plenty of daft, screen-enabled visual gags and regular back-and-forth with his scripted tech, the otherwise mainstream, crowd-pleasing comic enlivens his shallow identity exploration and superficial analysis of racism with absurdist touches, suggestive of groundwork being laid for greater ambition further into his career. You'll almost inevitably anticipate his story's twist coming a mile off, with the manner in which he then discards it illustrative of how narratively flimsy it was. Regardless, Sharma's a born entertainer, with an irrepressible need to do it.

Jay Richardson

until 24 August

How to Kill a Mouse

Just the Tonic at The Mash House (Venue 288)

★★★☆☆

A combination of cancer, rodent genocide, mental health struggles, body image issues and a loss of purpose doesn't sound the basis of a diverting hour. But the peppy Alex Berr's debut finds the American's show sustaining a baseline of wry, consistent wit. And you'll learn more about “humanely” euthanising mice than you probably bargained for.

Almost from the top, Berr foregrounds the influence of her late mother upon her, a dedicated nurse practitioner who had considerable success tackling the scourge of teen pregnancy in 1990s Virginia. Inspired by this and buying into her “girl boss” professor's zeal for women in STEM, the comic became a biomedical researcher, dispatching thousands of mice over the course of years investigating lung and brain cancer. Then her mother got sick with the rare, specific form of the disease she was studying and she started to lose her vocation. Gallows humour abounds. But Berr is equal to the task of keeping it from overwhelming, condensing her trauma into a single, controlled physical freakout that sees her hurtling around the room, contorting herself and screaming. The mental toll on scientists are clarified, with Berr's retirement from the profession afforded an unwelcome postscript by the Trump administration's assault on it.

Jay Richardson

until 24 August

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